Pink has investigated research around motivation and rewards and come up with some conclusions which apply equally well to schools as they do to businesses.

Schools often operate on the system Pink calls Motivation 2.0, the traditional “sticks and carrots” approach where good results and behaviour are rewarded and bad results and behaviour are punished. (Motivation 1.0 was the system our earliest ancestors operated under – otherwise known as survival.)

Pink asserts that Motivation 2.0 doesn’t usually work and that what works better is Motivation 3.0 which is framed around the principles of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

He believes that we do our best work when:

we have autonomy to work the way that suits us best,

a sense that we are striving to master the skills involved in our work and

If your boss, your principal, your teacher are giving you the freedom to choose your task, your time, your team and your technique, then they are placing trust in you.

Sometimes the structures of school make it hard to implement systems based on trust and autonomy.

For example, how can we give students autonomy over their tasks when assessment has to have some sort of standardisation? How can we give them autonomy over their time when the school day operates on a timetable?

Pink has some suggestions, and the advent of MOOCs and BYOT seems to offer other opportunities to tinker with the system a bit.

What about systems that let teachers do their best work?

Do inspections and carrot rewards for high student achievement lead to teachers feeling motivated and trusted?